Posts Tagged ‘small businesses’

So Hillary Clinton’s basic economic pitch is that she is going to “level the playing field” by punishing Wall Street and big businesses and allowing all those horrible profits to be shared by the American people. And it will be oh, so good for us and oh, so bad for those terrible, greedy, evil Wall Street firms and corporations.

Sounds good. At least it sounds good to people who either aren’t that honest, or aren’t that bright, or are neither honest nor bright.

A Wall Street pay-to-play player said, “It was pretty glowing about us,” one person who watched the event said. “It’s so far from what she sounds like as a candidate now. It was like a rah-rah speech. She sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director.” And that’s exactly why we will NEVER hear her speeches as she betrays the American people and betrays as a lie every single thing she now says in her campaign rhetoric.

Hillary Clinton has proven herself more than any politician who has ever LIVED that she will be a crony capitalist fascist who will do insider deals with those who offer her something in return. She will sell out the American people for a nickel if that’s the going rate. You can absolutely trust Hillary Clinton to sell out your interests for larger, more powerful interests every single time. That is simply the story of her life.

The notion that this candidate is going to actually reform Wall Street in a way that would benefit anyone but Wall Street is so beyond laughable that it is beyond unreal. You literally have to be a fool to believe that. Mind you, there ARE plenty of intellectuals who are just such fools indeed. Famous prophetic novelist George Orwell said, “There are some ideas so absurd that only an ‘intellectual’ could believe them,” because no ordinary man was capable of being such a fool.” And the point he was making is that these people live in a giant ivory tower vacuum and none of their ideas actually have to ever be proven or even be provable in the real world to be believed. They live in a world of theories, not in a world of facts. They build nothing and have no grasp whatsoever on how TO build anything. They are nothing more than eloquent ideologues consumed by hidden agendas. Whereas people who must face reality every single day can never be so disconnected from the truth because unlike the intellectuals they would STARVE in the COLD. I came across a meme on Karl Marx that ought to be illustrative how such foolishness contaminates minds:

Why one earth would not merely millions but BILLIONS believe so passionately in the theories of this man, who had never in his lifetime actually produced ANYTHING in the actual, real world and whose theories have failed in every single “laboratory of reality” in which they have EVER been tried???

Karl Marx was precisely one of the fools that the great author of 1984 and Animal Farm was describing. In fact, both books were written by a horrified Orwell as he contemplated totalitarian socialism. The Marxist theory continues because of the sheer, ponderous weight of all the other ivory tower egghead fools who have absolutely no grasp whatsoever of actual reality.

But as bad as that indictment of Hillary Clinton is, that actually isn’t the “bottom line” fallacy that I am describing regarding Hillary Clinton’s economic plan. I merely cite that to try to undercut her own claims and the claims of other fools on her behalf. Just realize that the pile of intellectual manure that is laid out comes from the minds and the belief-systems of the very worst form of fools whom no ordinary man could ever be capable of becoming because they are forced to deal with actual real-world realities that prevent them from ever being such fools.

So what is it that I am describing about what is so truly wrong with Hillary’s plan???

It boils simply down to this: Hillary Clinton is saying she will tax and regulate and force Wall Street to be more “fair” or more “just.” And ignorant people believe that any regulation or tax or coercion on the part of government must surely be a good thing.

That’s where the bait-and-switch takes place.

What you need to understand is that Wall Street and mega-big corporate business actually WANTS higher taxes and punitive regulations and difficult compliance benchmarks. That sentence very likely shocks you and your mind may say, “No way!” But let me explain and hopefully you will agree with me when I lay it out.

According to the SBA’s Office of Advocacy: “Small firms accounted for 63 percent of the net new jobs created between 1993 and mid-2013 (or 14.3 million of the 22.9 million net new jobs). Since the end of the recession (from mid-2009 to mid-2013), small firms accounted for 60 percent of the net new jobs.

So you need to simply first understand that Wall Street and mega-big business are in direct competition with small businesses.

The second thing you need to understand is the crony-capitalist mindset that invariably prefers a larger share of a smaller piece of the pie than a much smaller share of a much larger piece of the pie. Every truly awful leader understands and exemplifies this mindset, with Kim Jong-un being possibly the very best example.

Let me show you a couple of satellite images of North Korea at night compared to South Korea at night to drive home my point:

South Korea is far more like what Republicans envision where laissez-faire free market enterprise is allowed to flourish; North Korea is far more like what the Democrats envision of a State-controlled economy. Guess which one ends up being DARK AT NIGHT because THERE’S NOTHING.

And you say, why on earth would they want that? Why wouldn’t they want a more open and free economy where they have less power, but far more is actually produced and it is better for all the people? And the simple answer is, “Because they wouldn’t have as much control and as much power.”

There’s a line from Milton’s Paradise Lost that I always remember: when Satan says, “Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven.” That’s the mindset of the left: better to have totalitarian rule over a small, impoverished economy than to be a smaller, weaker part of a large, powerful economy.

That is the quintessential essence of progressive liberalism: they want the power to dictate; they want to have the power to determine who wins and who loses, who pays and who receives, who is taxed and who is tax-exempt.

And what about Wall Street and what about the giant corporate entities. Don’t they just want more profit for their shareholders?

You need to understand: what if we allowed small business to truly flourish? What would happen to the market share of those great big giant corporate entities and the Wall Street that I’ve already established and documented owns Hillary Clinton and flourishes off of trading those giant corporate entities???

Now let me ask you a follow-up question: which would have an easier time paying higher taxes, great big corporations or small business owners??? Think about this and ANSWER it before you go on: who has an easier time coming up with an extra ten, twenty thousand dollars??? Who is going to be hurt more: the big corporation or the little business? Let me go on: which would have an easier time complying with a dizzying array of regulations and compliance burdens and costs??? Would the great big corporation or the small business owner have an easier time hiring a full-time compliance officer???

This Forbes article probably best nails the dilemma that Obama and the Federal Reserve that is struggling to monetize Obama’s failed policies have placed the United States in.

These are things called facts and I am explaining to you precisely WHY they are facts.

It is like this by design. You’ve been sold out. Obama was bought and sold and Hillary Clinton is more bought and more sold than any human being who ever lived.

Over the last eight years, Barack Obama – and now Hillary Clinton is actually promising to do even worse for another eight years- and those under them who control the “bundle of sticks” that we all now ARE thanks to these policies have sold our collectivist souls to the devil.

Let me get back to that all-telling statistic involving entrepreneurship and new business start-ups being DESTROYED by this president like we have never seen.

Would the market share of the giant firms go up or down if the smaller businesses were allowed to actually be unleashed as they were allowed to keep more of their profits and put those profits back into their businesses and be forced to comply with fewer stupid regulations that incur thousands of hours of compliance paperwork??? And the answer is that the pie would grow larger, but the Wall Street- and the corporate-share of that pie would grow much smaller as small businesses grew and grew and grew and were ultimately large enough to become big players themselves.

So let me just quickly lay it out for you: when a Barack Obama or a Hillary Clinton – who are owned lock, stock and barrel by Wall Street and by the mega-corporations – gets into power, they create laws and taxes and regulations and compliance factors that they invite the great big giant entities to write on a pay-to-play basis.

And the biggest players write the laws to shut out their smaller competition, understanding that if they can strangle those smaller businesses and stop them from being able to build and grow and compete with them, that they will get to remain at the top of the heap for decades, even for generations.

The economic purpose of the Democrat Party is to ensure that the very biggest players remain the very biggest players and the smaller competitors are never truly allowed to compete. The giant Wall Street and corporate dinosaurs don’t want that smarter, more agile mammal to come along and eat their eggs and finish off their road to extinction. No. they will continue to maintain the Democratic Party as the engine to maintain the status quo so that that new mammal can never evolve to threaten them.

If you elect Hillary Clinton, you WILL get more of the same; you WILL get a smaller pie with the largest players – who each paid the system for the privilege of remaining the largest players – having the giant share. And you WILL get fewer jobs, fewer opportunities, and lower wages as a result.

THAT is what is wrong with Hillary Clinton’s economic plan, just as it was wrong with Obama’s economic plan. Because it’s the same damn tired plan that is nothing more than a watered-down version of Marxism.

This is the economic equivalent of getting in a fight for your life against a guy with a sword who cuts off your right arm. And you’re thinking, “Damn, I really needed that arm.” Only it’s the economy fighting to live and Obama’s socialist takeover of health care is the sword.

Contact:
Jenna Weisbord, 202-662-0766
jweisbord@franchise.org
WASHINGTON, April 24-Today, the Wall Street Journal reported that the 2014 U.S. Bank Small Business Annual Survey found that, “In January, nearly half of small-business owners with at least five employees, or 45% of those polled, said they had had to curb their hiring plans because of the health law, and almost a third – 29% – said they had been forced to make staff cuts, according to a U.S. Bancorp survey of 3,173 owners with less than $10 million in annual revenue that will be released Thursday.” (Sarah Needleman & Angus Loten, “Small Businesses Find Benefits, Costs As They Navigate Affordable Care Act,” Wall Street Journal, 4/23/14)

Both pieces of research support bi-partisan efforts to return to the traditional definition of full-time employment under the ACA. This month the House of Representatives passed the Save American Workers Act, sponsored by Rep. Todd Young (R-IN). Similar legislation was introduced in the Senate by Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Joe Donnelly (D-IN).

Below are highlights of the study:U.S. Bank Small Business Survey Finds “Owners Remain Skeptical Of The Long-Term Impact Of The Affordable Care Act On Their Business” With More Than 60 Percent Saying It Will Be Negative For Their Business. “The 2014 U.S. Bank Small Business Annual Survey found that “slightly more than six in 10 owners now say the long-term impact of the Affordable Care Act will be negative on their business.” (2014 U.S. Bank Small Business Annual Survey, U.S. Bank, 4/24/14)

Additional Findings:

Nearly half of businesses with at least five employees (45%) say it has forced them to decrease forecasted new hires and almost one-third report it has led to cuts in staff (29%).

Larger businesses are more likely to have cut employee benefits or shifted the cost burden of higher benefits to employees as a result of the legislation.

The smaller the business the more likely they say the implementation of the Affordable Care Act has caused them to postpone or cancel planned investments in their business.

At least three out of five owners with a minimum of $1 million in revenue or five employees say the new healthcare law has resulted in higher premiums for their business.

Local Business Owner Tim Cain Argues That The Health Law Raises Operating Costs And “The Timing Couldn’t Be Worse.” “…if the number of enrollees in his health plans increases to 70 percent of his workforce, Mr. Cain estimates his costs could swell to more than $500,000. That might force him to raise prices, he says, at a time when the impact of this year’s harsh winter—and an extended drought in California—is already pushing up costs for fruit and vegetables. ‘The timing couldn’t be worse, really,’ he says.” (Sarah Needleman & Angus Loten, “Small Businesses Find Benefits, Costs As They Navigate Affordable Care Act,” Wall Street Journal, 4/23/14)
This survey echoes previous research conducted by Public Opinion Strategies on behalf of the IFA and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

According To A Public Opinion Strategies Survey, 31 Percent Of Franchise Businesses Have Already Reduced Worker Hours To Cope With Health Law. “Additionally, 27 percent of franchise and 12 percent of non-franchise businesses have already replaced full-time workers with part-time employees.” (Presentation of Findings From National Research Conducted Among Business Decision-Makers,” Public Opinion Strategies, 10/13)

Further, The POS Survey Found That More Than Half Of Businesses With 40 To 70 Employees Plan To Make Personnel Changes To Mitigate The Impact Of ACA. “Among businesses with 40 to 70 employees, 59 percent of franchise and 52 percent of non-franchise businesses plan to make personnel changes to stay below the 50 full time equivalent employee threshold. This accounts for 23 percent of all franchise and 10 percent of all non-franchise decision-makers surveyed.” (Presentation of Findings From National Research Conducted Among Business Decision-Makers,” Public Opinion Strategies, 10/13)
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About the International Franchise Association
The International Franchise Association is the world’s oldest and largest organization representing franchising worldwide. Celebrating over 50 years of excellence, education and advocacy, IFA works through its government relations and public policy, media relations and educational programs to protect, enhance and promote franchising. Through its media awareness campaign highlighting the theme, Franchising: Building Local Businesses, One Opportunity at a Time, IFA promotes the economic impact of the more than 825,000 franchise establishments, which support nearly 18 million jobs and $2.1 trillion of economic output for the U.S. economy. IFA members include franchise companies in over 300 different business format categories, individual franchisees and companies that support the industry in marketing, law and business development.

ObamaCare is evil. It is simply evil. And evil laws have evil consequences.

Obama keeps assuring us that his fascist takeover of health care has reduced costs. His evidence? An idiot study by the CBO that revised a previous idiot study. (Let’s conveniently forget the fact that the CBO said costs would be lower than previously projected because people will get FAR crappier “health care” under ObamaCare than they had thought). The problem is that the real world doesn’t march to the goose step of either Obama or the idiots at the CBO. And actual businesses with actual employees who are on the verge of actually gutting their workforce to pay for this demonic law are screaming as their costs “necessarily skyrocket.”

The liars who gave us ObamaCare lied about EVERYTHING. Obama lied when he assured us it would get more popular over time; it has become LESS popular. He lied when he said it would bend the cost curve down (which he’s STILL falsely claiming); ObamaCare is MASSIVELY adding to the cost of healthcare – which is why businesses are faced with cutting hiring to pay the huge costs of this socialist mess. He lied when he said if you liked your doctor you could keep your doctor. And he lied when he said if you already had health insurance and you liked your plan you would be able to keep your plan rather than be forced to accept Obama’s damn plan.

This country is going down the toilet. The liberal socialist elites – who preach “redistribution of wealth” but mean, “redistribute THE PEOPLE’S wealth to US” by means of manipulating markets, interest rates, federal reserve policies and government regulatory burdens – are ensuring it.

It’s a truly fascinating thing. Had we “gone over the cliff,” do you know what would have happened? We would have returned to the Clinton tax rates.

What is truly remarkable is that the Clinton tax rates are now nearly universally viewed by Democrats as having been 98% pure, distilled evil. Because the Democrat Party has now been saying that Americans can’t afford to pay the stupid and evil tax rates that Democrats once demanded they pay.

But what would have been stupid and evil and harmful to the American economy for 98% of the population is in fact true for 100% of the population. It is simply a gargantuan lie to try to argue that the laws of economics – that when you tax something you invariably get LESS of it – is true for 98% but is a lie for 100%.

Yes, it is a fact of history that the Republican Party under George W. Bush saved America with the tax cuts that helped the middle class grow more and spend more. And it is now a fact of history that Democrats are now implicitly saying that the Clinton tax rates were 98% evil and counterproductive to a growing economy. Democrats were completely wrong about their high tax rates; but Democrats are liars who won’t EVER admit they were wrong. Instead they merely continually shift their demonization and demagoguery to a different target without ever admitting that it was only a relative few years ago that Democrats were attacking the middle class with high taxes that are suddenly now universally recognized as evil.

Isn’t it amazing how Obama, the Democrats and the mainstream media propaganda actually just claimed credit for 98% of the Bush tax cuts while still blaming Republicans as evil for creating the very thing that Democrats are on record as now being 98% for? How does this kind of falsehood pass for truth???

And keep in mind that Bill Clinton – who largely presided over a good economy with the help of Republicans who controlled both the House and the Senate – said “the era of big government is over.” Obama reversed that and now America will pay dearly for it.

It is a fact of history that Democrats are now demanding that we keep 98% of Bush’s tax cuts while simultaneously taking credit for them. While amazingly still saying that the Bush tax cuts – which they now say were 98% good – are still evil.

History is now replete, full, satiated, gluttonously gorged with examples of Democrats’ stupid tax claims doing the very opposite of what they claimed it would do. The most infamous example is the luxury tax or so-called “yacht tax” on the rich. Democrats assured Americans that the rich could certainly pay a little more (there’s a line that stupid people keep arguing, isn’t it?) to own luxury items. Democrats saw the government getting more and the rich paying “more of their fair share” (there’s another stupid line of demagoguery for you). What in FACT happened was that it turned out that, guess what, rich people AVOID TAXES just like everybody else tends to do.

The nation’s luxury-boat builders, many clinging to their businesses after two years of plunging sales, finally got some good news last week.

President Bush, in his budget proposals, asked Congress to repeal the 10 percent luxury tax on yachts priced at more than $100,000 (and also on private planes that cost more than $250,000). The repeal, which Congress is likely to approve, would be retroactive to Feb. 1.

Since the tax took effect in January 1990, hundreds of builders of large and small boats have spoken of it as a stake driven into the heart of an industry already suffering from the recession, tighter bank rules on financing and fallout from the gulf war.

In the last two years, about 100 builders of luxury boats — recreational craft costing more than $100,000 — cut their operations severely and laid off thousands of workers. Some builders filed for protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code.

Now, sales personnel and owners of marine companies are hoping they will be swamped by buyers who have held off in the expectation that the tax will be repealed.

The 10 percent tax applies to the amount of the cost above $100,000, so that a boat selling for $300,000 carries a $20,000 luxury tax. That tax is in addition to any state and local taxes. […]

Also, boat prices have dropped as much as 40 to 50 percent, interest rates have fallen and some lenders have begun to offer financing, though on very strict terms.

“The luxury tax really hurt us,” said William J. Healey, the president of the Viking Yacht Company in New Gretna, N.J.

He gestured toward a few big luxury boats being built there. A 50-foot boat costing $800,000 is bound for Italy; a $1 million yacht may be sold in Japan. A 65-foot motor yacht costing $1.3 million is bound for Greece.

The business from overseas, developed in the last two years, is enabling Viking to limp along, its work force cut to 150 workers from 800. “Very fortunately, it has helped us weather the downturn,” Mr. Healey said as he pointed to two production lines that have been inactive for several years.

Domestic demand fell so sharply that a year ago Viking shut an operation in Tampa, Fla., that employed 800 workers. The plant was built in the boom of the 1980’s, when most boat makers could not keep up with demand.

Yeah, that’s right, stupid liberal. Raising taxes on the rich a few percent won’t hurt anybody. They can afford it.

And if you’re either stupid or demon-possessed, you still believe that damn Marxist class warfare lie. But people who prefer the truth and have a clue about something called “history” sure don’t.

There’s a second and even more harmful reason that Obama won’t raise more revenue as he falsely claims: because he’s going to be targeting and attacking the small businesses that create jobs. Yes, it’s true on one level that 97% of small businesses won’t see their taxes shoot up and force them to lay off workers and cut back to pay the dictator. But as is often true, another word for “lie” is “statistic.” Because here’s the thing: THAT THREE PERCENT OF THE BUSINESSES DO MOST OF THE ACTUAL HIRING.

Out of 27,281,452 total firms, 21,351,320 are listed as “nonemployer firms.” Which means that 78.23 percent of all small businesses hire ZERO employees. So when Obama says that 97% of small businesses won’t be affected by his tax hike, please understand that the whopping majority of those businesses that won’t be affected aren’t hiring anybody. Another 3,617,764 small businesses have no more than four employees. Those small businesses that hire zero workers plus those small businesses that hire no more than four workers constitute 91.5% of ALL small businesses.

Here’s a more relevant way to look at it. When you consider the businesses that employ more than four people, you are looking at businesses that hire 94.97 percent of ALL the workers who work for small businesses. And while not all of the small businesses that hire between 5-9 employees are going to be paying higher taxes as a result of Obama’s class warfare on small businesses, most of them do. And virtually none of the businesses that hire more than ten employees are going to earn less than $250,000 a year.

So, yeah, the kid who is an “independent contractor” working his paper route won’t be paying more taxes under Obama’s class warfare plan. That’s great. But the overwhelming majority of small businesses (defined as businesses employing 499 or fewer workers) are going to get the crap beat out of them.

So Obama and Democrats like to point out that 97% of small businesses won’t be affected by their tax hikes. But more than 78% of small businesses in his “97 percent” figure are “nonemployer firms” and hire ZERO workers. So no jobs. And when you look at the businesses that hire workers, you are looking overwhelmingly at the businesses that are going to be hit by these new tax hikes. That is simply a FACT. And it is simply a FACT that they are going to be forced to raise their prices to accommodate their rising costs of doing business, which will in turn reduce demand for their products or services, which will then in turn force them to lay off workers because of aforementioned reduced demand.

So what Obama and the Democrats just did is savagely attack the only people who have any chance at creating more job opportunities and bringing the US economy off its back and onto its feet again.

Keep in mind that in pimping his ObamaCare, Obama promised that premiums wouldn’t go up; he promised that if you like your doctor, you could keep your doctor; he promised that he wouldn’t tax the middle class. He lied about EVERYTHING. And he is lying to you now. Because he has over and over again demonstrated that he is a liar without shame, without honesty, without decency and without integrity.

But we’re just getting warmed up describing how truly godawful this “deal” is.

Obama – even on his regime’s own calculations – will only get 8 1/2 days of additional tax revenue by attacking the rich and sabotaging the US economy by hurting job creators. The problem when you consider Obama’s trillion-plus dollar deficits every single year of his entire presidency is that he refused to do a damn thing about the OTHER 356.5 days of the year.

Again, Barack Obama is a liar and a hypocrite without shame, without decency, without honor and without integrity. He is shameless. The Democrat Party is shameless. And the mainstream media which protects both with their propaganda machine are shameless.

The U.S. fiscal gap, calculated (by us) using theCongressional Budget Office’s realistic long-term budget forecast — the Alternative Fiscal Scenario — is now $222 trillion. Last year, it was $211 trillion. The $11 trillion difference — this year’s true federal deficit — is 10 times larger than the official deficit and roughly as large as the entire stock of official debt in public hands.

It’s funny, in a sad, pathetic, ironic sort of way: Democrats demonize Republicans for trying to protect America and her interests abroad with a strong national defense. But the only thing the Constitution specifically ordered the federal government to “provide for the common defense.” And note that word, “provide.” It means, “pay for to provide.” The same liberals who demonize us for doing what common sense and the Constitution alike command us to do point to the phrase “promote the general welfare.” Do you get that difference between “provide” and “promote.” If you ask me to provide something, I’m on the hook for it in a financial way. That’s what it means to be a provider. If you want me to promote something, I’m going to say nice things about it and cheerlead for it. But that’s all. And so like everything else, Democrats turned the Constitution, basic morality and true Christianity on its head and made what is wrong right and what is right wrong.

If liberals were actually to “promote the general welfare,” they would cheerlead the private economy and encourage growth by keeping taxes low for those who are willing to work hard so they can keep what they earn. And then, with the minimum size and minimum amount of regulation, they would get the hell out of the way.

What Democrats “promote” is the general cancer instead.

And that mindset became a rotting cancer that is just about to consume and kill the patient America.

This nation is doomed. And if you voted for Obama, you are one of the people who doomed it. We cannot possibly pay these debts that will ultimately bankrupt this country but only after our children and their children are forced to bear the burden and suffer because of your self-righteous and sanctimonious greed a.k.a. “your entitlement mindset.” And one day you will stand before a holy God and answer for the fact that you are a toxic human being whose soul swims in every kind of lie. Because that’s what Obama voters are: bad people who hate the truth and who prefer lies. Aside from your dishonesty, you are greedy and hypocritical – feeling yourself entitled to seize other people’s money when you would scream if your own money were taken from you. And aside from your dishonesty, greed and hypocrisy you are hurting the poor who ought to be helped. Because as I pointed out above – and thoroughly document with the article I linked you to stating it – when you seize the wealth of private citizens who overwhelmingly worked hard and then planned well and then worked hard some more to get that wealth, you end up hurting the very poor you falsely profess to be helping. Because you force businesses large and small alike to reduce their workers. You rob the poor of dignity by preventing them from being able to find jobs. And then you cynically exploit their desperation to get them to vote Democrat so they can be on welfare for life as long as they continue voting Democrat. Oh, you will one day be forced to give an account for all of it, rest assured. And you will be giving that account to a Someone who knows the truth from all of your lies and your slander.

In sixty days this “fiscal cliff deal” that the mainstream media is so damn giddy about will come boomaranging back in the form of a massive political crisis caused by Obama’s morally insane and fiscally evil out-of-control spending binge.

Republicans were maneuvered into an impossible rhetorical battle against a master demagogic rhetorician. They were demonized as “the party who was willing to force everybody’s taxes to go up over the wealthiest two percent of the country.” When how the hell were the Democrats not “the party who was willing to force everybody’s taxes to go up over the wealthiest two percent of the country”??? Weren’t Democrats threatening to go off the cliff unless they got to attack the top two percent of earners? How were they not doing the very thing they slandered the Republicans for doing???

This country is going to shut down in sixty days over that “spending issue” that Obama and the Democrats absolutely refused to deal with. Because this “deal” did nothing to slow down the debt, nothing to slow down Obama’s shocking deficits, nothing to avert a debt ceiling showdown and nothing to avert the REAL fiscal cliff of Obama’s sequestration plan.

The markets that stupidly surged today will just as stupidly collapse then. Because anybody who isn’t a fool should see this confrontation over insane and immoral debt coming.

Meanwhile, it is God damn America, full speed ahead to ruin. And then the Antichrist and the Tribulation will come.

Mitt Romney repeatedly said last night that he would not allow tax cuts to add to the deficit. He repeatedly said it because over and over again Obama blathered the liberal talking point that cutting taxes necessarily increased deficits.

Romney’s exact words: “I want to underline that — no tax cut that adds to the deficit.”

The fact of the matter is that we can go back to Calvin Coolidge who said very nearly THE EXACT SAME THING to his treasury secretary: he too would not allow any tax cuts that added to the debt. Andrew Mellon – quite possibly the most brilliant economic mind of his day – did a great deal of research and determined what he believed was the best tax rate. And the Coolidge administration DID cut income taxes and MASSIVELY increased revenues. Coolidge and Mellon cut the income tax rate 67.12 percent (from 73 to 24 percent); and revenues not only did not go down, but they went UP by at least 42.86 percent (from $700 billion to over $1 billion).

That’s something called a documented fact. But that wasn’t all that happened: another incredible thing was that the taxes and percentage of taxes paid actually went UP for the rich. Because as they were allowed to keep more of the profits that they earned by investing in successful business, they significantly increased their investments and therefore paid more in taxes than they otherwise would have had they continued sheltering their money to protect themselves from the higher tax rates. Liberals ignore reality, but it is simply true. It is a fact. It happened.

Then FDR came along and raised the tax rates again and the opposite happened: we collected less and less revenue while the burden of taxation fell increasingly on the poor and middle class again. Which is exactly what Obama wants to do.

People don’t realize that John F. Kennedy, one of the greatest Democrat presidents, was a TAX CUTTERwho believed the conservative economic philosophy that cutting tax rates would in fact increase tax revenues. He too cut taxes, and he too increased tax revenues.

So we get to Ronald Reagan, who famously cut taxes. And again, we find that Reagan cut that godawful liberal tax rate during an incredibly godawful liberal-caused economic recession, and he increased tax revenue by 20.71 percent (with revenues increasing from $956 billion to $1.154 trillion). And again, the taxes were paid primarily by the rich:

“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”

So we get to George Bush and the Bush tax cuts that liberals and in particular Obama have just demonized up one side and demagogued down the other. And I can simply quote the New York Times AT the time:

WASHINGTON, July 12 – For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion.

A Jump in Corporate Payments On Wednesday, White House officials plan to announce that the deficit for the 2005 fiscal year, which ends in September, will be far smaller than the $427 billion they estimated in February.

Mr. Bush plans to hail the improvement at a cabinet meeting and to cite it as validation of his argument that tax cuts would stimulate the economy and ultimately help pay for themselves.

Based on revenue and spending data through June, the budget deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was $251 billion, $76 billion lower than the $327 billion gap recorded at the corresponding point a year earlier.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the deficit for the full fiscal year, which reached $412 billion in 2004, could be “significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion.”
The big surprise has been in tax revenue, which is running nearly 15 percent higher than in 2004. Corporate tax revenue has soared about 40 percent, after languishing for four years, and individual tax revenue is up as well.

And of course the New York Times, as reliable liberals, use the adjective whenever something good happens under conservative policies and whenever something bad happens under liberal policies: “unexpected.” But it WASN’T “unexpected.” It was EXACTLY what Republicans had said would happen and in fact it was exactly what HAD IN FACT HAPPENED every single time we’ve EVER cut income tax rates.

The truth is that conservative tax policy has a perfect track record: every single time it has ever been tried, we have INCREASED tax revenues while not only exploding economic activity and creating more jobs, but encouraging the wealthy to pay more in taxes as well. And liberals simply dishonestly refuse to acknowledge documented history.

Now let’s take a look at the utterly fallacious view that tax cuts in general create higher deficits.

Let’s take a trip back in time, starting with the 1920s. From Burton Folsom’s book, New Deal or Raw Deal?:

In 1921, President Harding asked the sixty-five-year-old [Andrew] Mellon to be secretary of the treasury; the national debt [resulting from WWI] had surpassed $20 billion and unemployment had reached 11.7 percent, one of the highest rates in U.S. history. Harding invited Mellon to tinker with tax rates to encourage investment without incurring more debt. Mellon studied the problem carefully; his solution was what is today called “supply side economics,” the idea of cutting taxes to stimulate investment. High income tax rates, Mellon argued, “inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw this capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities. . . . The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up, wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people” (page 128).

Mellon wrote, “It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue to the Government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower taxes.” And he compared the government setting tax rates on incomes to a businessman setting prices on products: “If a price is fixed too high, sales drop off and with them profits.”

And what happened?

“As secretary of the treasury, Mellon promoted, and Harding and Coolidge backed, a plan that eventually cut taxes on large incomes from 73 to 24 percent and on smaller incomes from 4 to 1/2 of 1 percent. These tax cuts helped produce an outpouring of economic development – from air conditioning to refrigerators to zippers, Scotch tape to radios and talking movies. Investors took more risks when they were allowed to keep more of their gains. President Coolidge, during his six years in office, averaged only 3.3 percent unemployment and 1 percent inflation – the lowest misery index of any president in the twentieth century.

Furthermore, Mellon was also vindicated in his astonishing predictions that cutting taxes across the board would generate more revenue. In the early 1920s, when the highest tax rate was 73 percent, the total income tax revenue to the U.S. government was a little over $700 million. In 1928 and 1929, when the top tax rate was slashed to 25 and 24 percent, the total revenue topped the $1 billion mark. Also remarkable, as Table 3 indicates, is that the burden of paying these taxes fell increasingly upon the wealthy” (page 129-130).

Now, that is incredible upon its face, but it becomes even more incredible when contrasted with FDR’s antibusiness and confiscatory tax policies, which both dramatically shrunk in terms of actual income tax revenues (from $1.096 billion in 1929 to $527 million in 1935), and dramatically shifted the tax burden to the backs of the poor by imposing huge new excise taxes (from $540 million in 1929 to $1.364 billion in 1935). See Table 1 on page 125 of New Deal or Raw Deal for that information.

FDR both collected far less taxes from the rich, while imposing a far more onerous tax burden upon the poor.

It is simply a matter of empirical fact that tax cuts create increased revenue, and that those [Democrats] who have refused to pay attention to that fact have ended up reducing government revenues even as they increased the burdens on the poorest whom they falsely claim to help.

Let’s move on to John F. Kennedy, one of the most popular Democrat presidents ever. Few realize that he was also a supply-side tax cutter.

“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now … Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”

– John F. Kennedy, Nov. 20, 1962, president’s news conference

“Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government.”

“In today’s economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction even if it temporarily enlarges the federal deficit – why reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues.”

“Our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort – thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate.”

“A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. Every taxpayer and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new conveniences, education and investment. Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues.”

– John F. Kennedy, Sept. 18, 1963, radio and television address to the nation on tax-reduction bill

Which is to say that modern Democrats are essentially calling one of their greatest presidents a liar when they demonize tax cuts as a means of increasing government revenues.

So let’s move on to Ronald Reagan. Reagan had two major tax cutting policies implemented: the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) of 1981, which was retroactive to 1981, and the Tax Reform Act of 1986.

We find that 8 of the following 10 years there was a surplus of revenue from 1980, prior to the Reagan tax cuts. And, following the Tax Reform Act of 1986, there was a MASSIVE INCREASE of revenue.

So Reagan’s tax cuts increased revenue. But who paid the increased tax revenue? The poor? Opponents of the Reagan tax cuts argued that his policy was a giveaway to the rich (ever heard that one before?) because their tax payments would fall. But that was exactly wrong. In reality:

“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”

Reagan whipped inflation. Just as he whipped that malaise and that crisis of confidence.

This might explain why a Gallup poll showed that Ronald Reagan is regarded as our greatest president, while fellow tax-cutting great John F. Kennedy is tied for second with Abraham Lincoln. Because, in proving Democrat policies are completely wrongheaded, he helped people. Including poorer people who benefited from the strong economy he built with his tax policies.

Let’s move on to George Bush and the infamous (to Democrats) Bush tax cuts. And let me quote none other than the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, July 12 – For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion.

A Jump in Corporate Payments On Wednesday, White House officials plan to announce that the deficit for the 2005 fiscal year, which ends in September, will be far smaller than the $427 billion they estimated in February.

Mr. Bush plans to hail the improvement at a cabinet meeting and to cite it as validation of his argument that tax cuts would stimulate the economy and ultimately help pay for themselves.

Based on revenue and spending data through June, the budget deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was $251 billion, $76 billion lower than the $327 billion gap recorded at the corresponding point a year earlier.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the deficit for the full fiscal year, which reached $412 billion in 2004, could be “significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion.” The big surprise has been in tax revenue, which is running nearly 15 percent higher than in 2004. Corporate tax revenue has soared about 40 percent, after languishing for four years, and individual tax revenue is up as well.

[Update, September 20: The above NY Times link was scrubbed; the same article, edited differently, appears here.]

Note the newspaper’s use of liberals favorite adjective: “unexpected.” They never expect Republican and conservative polices to work, but they always do if they’re given the chance. They never expect Democrat and liberal policies to fail, but they always seem to fail every single time they’re tried.

raised federal tax receipts by $785 billion, the largest four-year revenue increase in U.S. history. In fiscal 2007, which ended last month, the government took in 6.7% more tax revenues than in 2006.

These increases in tax revenue have substantially reduced the federal budget deficits. In 2004 the deficit was $413 billion, or 3.5% of gross domestic product. It narrowed to $318 billion in 2005, $248 billion in 2006 and $163 billion in 2007. That last figure is just 1.2% of GDP, which is half of the average of the past 50 years.

Lower tax rates have be so successful in spurring growth that the percentage of federal income taxes paid by the very wealthy has increased. According to the Treasury Department, the top 1% of income tax filers paid just 19% of income taxes in 1980 (when the top tax rate was 70%), and 36% in 2003, the year the Bush tax cuts took effect (when the top rate became 35%). The top 5% of income taxpayers went from 37% of taxes paid to 56%, and the top 10% from 49% to 68% of taxes paid. And the amount of taxes paid by those earning more than $1 million a year rose to $236 billion in 2005 from $132 billion in 2003, a 78% increase.

Budget deficits are not merely a matter of tax policy; it is a matter of tax policy AND spending policy. Imagine you have a minimum wage job, but live within your means. Then you get a job that pays a million dollars a year. And you go a little nuts, buy a mansion, a yacht, a fancy car, and other assorted big ticket items such that you go into debt. Are you really so asinine as to argue that you made more money when you earned minimum wage? But that’s literally the Democrats’ argument when they criticize Reagan (who defeated the Soviet Union and won the Cold War in the aftermath of a recession he inherited from President Carter) and George Bush (who won the Iraq War after suffering the greatest attack on US soil in the midst of a recession he inherited from President Clinton).

Out of 27,281,452 total firms, 21,351,320 are listed as “nonemployer firms.” Which means that 78.23 percent of all small businesses hire ZERO employees. So when Obama says that 97% of small businesses won’t be affected by his tax hike, please understand that the whopping majority of those businesses that won’t be affected aren’t hiring anybody. Another 3,617,764 small businesses have no more than four employees. Those small businesses that hire zero workers plus those small businesses that hire no more than four workers constitute 91.5% of ALL small businesses.

Here’s a more relevant way to look at it. When you consider the businesses that employ more than four people, you are looking at businesses that hire 94.97 percent of ALL the workers who work for small businesses. And while not all of the small businesses that hire between 5-9 employees are going to be paying higher taxes as a result of Obama’s class warfare on small businesses, most of them do. And virtually none of the businesses that hire more than ten employees are going to earn less than $250,000 a year.

Romney pointed out in the debate that half of all jobs created by small business and a quarter of ALL THE JOBS CREATED IN AMERICA would have their income taxes skyrocket under Barack Obama.

President Obama just threw a grenade at small business. He implied that everything is done in a community setting with the government or outside help. He is implying that individualism and individual achievements should not be highlighted, as everyone and everything needs help. In his speech yesterday, President Obama referenced the involvement of the government in the development of the internet and in building roads and bridges. He is correct to say the government did involve themselves in those endeavors. That was the government of the people, by the people and for the people.

If we get into a discussion whether business owners want the government as their partners, the President is on the wrong side of the tracks. What is being debated is the matter of degree. How much government? How big should government be? Small businesses give back through taxes, jobs and charity but not by enlarging government. This is all about an attack on individualism and individual achievement. The implications is clearly is that we need the government and we need big government. Not a great position for capitalism, small business or entrepreneurs.

There’s your short summary of Obama’s rhetoric. If you’d like to hear a little more, then please keep reading.

When both the Chamber of Commerce and the NFIB repeatedly say a president sucks for creating business growth, and when survey after survey of small business owners validate what these two small business organizations are saying, then that president SUCKS. If you want Marxism, then don’t listen to the Chamber of Commerce or the NFIB. If you want a job and the opportunity to advance your fortunes in a nation that has historically been better than any other at allowing the opportunity to do do, then get this joker out of the White House.

Obama – the failed president who a short time ago said “the private sector’s doing fine” – has demonstrated that he has no business talking about businesses. He is simply an ignorant fool who does not understand how a free market functions. And that is why he has spent the last four years unsuccessfully attempting to “fundamentally transform” America into a centrally planned economic system that has failed wherever it has taken root.

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

“I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,’” Warren said. “No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.

“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.”

These two doctrinaire liberals couldn’t be more clear – which makes it frankly amazing that the left would now try so hard to twist their words now that their policies are being exposed for what they clearly and truly are: they are saying that businesses do not deserve to take pride and responsibility in their own success because the Government (with a big “G” because that is how they view government) contributed to that success by building roads and bridges and providing schools and other infrastructure. And they are using that as their justification that business owners therefore owe far more in taxes than they have been paying. Because the Government is more responsible for their success than they are.

That is PRECISELY what Obama was saying.

And that is why Jack Gilchrist as a successful small business employer is so pissed off at Obama:

In another comment I explained this to a liberal who never has and never will comprehend how the American economy functions:

There is absolutely no question and any honest person knows there is no question that what Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren are saying is that all people who build businesses are really just pirating off government infrastructure, such that they have no right to take any meaningful credit for the success of their businesses. And therefore business owners ought to be willing to pay their real god the Government what it is due with their sacrificial offering of high taxes. But that is simply bullcrap because: 1) Given that both successful people and unsuccessful people alike have all benefited equally from schools and roads, how can the schools and roads then possibly be the cause of the successful people’s success? It was those business owners’ hard work, risk, more hard work and good decisions that made them successful, not the public schools and roads that welfare slackers get just as much of as small business owners get. And 2) Given that these business owners were already forced to pay for this stuff by their already too-high taxes, it is frankly despicable for Obama to suck out business owners’ tax money for services, and then turn around and argue that because the government provided those services that Obama forced the business owners to pay for therefore meant that the business owners who were forced to pay for those services aren’t truly responsible for all the hard work and risks that they took that had nothing to do with the government.

As an example, I went to a public school when I was a kid. Do you know why I went to a public school? Because liberals forced my parents to pay property taxes that went into public schools and ONLY into public schools. My parents wanted us to go to Christian schools, but at that time they couldn’t pay the taxes that funded the government schools AND at the same time pay in addition to those taxes to send us to a Christian school. If my parents had been allowed to use their property tax money to instead send us to Christian schools, then THAT’S where we would have gone. If liberals had any decency they would be for VOUCHERS that allow parents to choose which schools to send their kids to. Instead, they condemn millions of children to failing government schools. And then take credit for it.

So what liberals are in fact doing is 1) forcing Americans to contribute to a government system and then 2) saying that since we benefited from the system that we were forced to contribute to, we are therefore not allowed to take any credit for our success that was based on our risks, our initiative, our investments and our time and our work. Instead Government should get all the credit and liberals can then justify their forcing people to pay even higher taxes on the basis of the taxes that they have already been forced to pay.

When Karl Marx said that “religion is the opiate of the masses,” the point he was driving home was that God is an illusion that was keeping the people satisfied in their economic misery. Marx believed that economic reality was the ONLY reality. And he believed that if his economic and political Marxism replaced God with “the State” (i.e., “the Government”), that the people would find the true happiness they had wrongly been seeking in God.

And of course all they found was misery and death. Every SINGLE timeany form of Marxism was tried.

Barack Obama has a trend going. He gets a lousy jobs report because his economic policies are wildly failing. So he trots out and suddenly discovers he was lying when he ran for president in 2008 and he’s really FOR gay marriage. The next month, Obama gets a lousy jobs report because his economic policies are wildly failing. So he trots out and decides that as emperor he can ignore the law and arbitrarily decide that more Hispanics will vote for him if he abrogates the law and refuses to detain illegal immigrants. Obama gets a lousy jobs report because his economic policies are wildly failing, so he announces that he will only support the Bush tax cuts be extended for people who make less than $250,000 a year.

Some might begin to see an incredibly cynical and disgraceful pattern here.

Obama is the most genuinely evil man who has ever held the office of president of the United States. But I’m not here to talk about his incredibly cynical timing for a policy that many DEMOCRATS have publicly opposed.

“They are not rich, and in large parts of the country, that kind of income does not get you a big home or lots of vacations or anything else that’s associated with wealth in America,” Schumer said in October. “They are firmly in the middle class. Same with small-business owners in that level.”

By the way, one of the Democrats who says that Barack Obama is an idiot who is doing the absolute last thing we ought to be doing is a guy named Barack Hussein Obama:

The next year, in 2010, during a quarter in which GDP growth was actually four times higher than it is now, Obama said this:

“I am just listening to the consensus among people who know the economy best. And what they will say is that if you either increased taxes or significantly lowered spending when the economy remains somewhat fragile, that that would have a destimulative effect and potentially you’d see a lot of folks losing business, more folks potentially losing jobs. That would be a mistake when the economy has not fully taken off.” — Barack Obama, January 29, 2010

That was before the before mentioned lousy jobs report for June 2012 because Obama’s economic policies are wildly failing.

I have on several occasions compared government stimulus – which sucks money out of the productive private sector and doles it out to politically connected boondoggles – to giving a diabetic kid sugar. Sure that diabetic kid will run around for a little bit and it will look like maybe it’s working. But it isn’t, because that kid is going to fall down and pass out. And Obama’s answer is to pump more sugar into that poor kid. Obama has done the largest stimulus in history ($862 billion that will ultimately cost the American people over $3.27 TRILLION); he did the second largest stimulus in history ($447 billion). Neither did anything but hurt the economy. As Ronald Reagan put it, “You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?” Barack Obama says piss on that. And now Obama is demanding son of the son of a wildly failed stimulus that is doing nothing more than burdening our children’s children’s children’s children with more debt and guaranteeing the collapse of America in a much shorter timeframe than anyone is talking about.

The economy is going into a diabetic coma because of Obama’s policies. And Obama wants more sugar.

Obama’s and Democrats’ policies amount to nothing more than a naked government takeover of the private sector. It has failed miserably, but these people are fools of an astonishing magnitude and after doubling-down and tripling-down they will quadruple-down until this nation collapses.

I’m here to talk about the rape of small businesses under this wicked president.

Out of 27,281,452 total firms, 21,351,320 are listed as “nonemployer firms.” Which means that 78.23 percent of all small businesses hire ZERO employees. So when Obama says that 97% of small businesses won’t be affected by his tax hike, please understand that the whopping majority of those businesses that won’t be affected aren’t hiring anybody. Another 3,617,764 small businesses have no more than four employees. Those small businesses that hire zero workers plus those small businesses that hire no more than four workers constitute 91.5% of ALL small businesses.

Here’s a more relevant way to look at it. When you consider the businesses that employ more than four people, you are looking at businesses that hire 94.97 percent of ALL the workers who work for small businesses. And while not all of the small businesses that hire between 5-9 employees are going to be paying higher taxes as a result of Obama’s class warfare on small businesses, most of them do. And virtually none of the businesses that hire more than ten employees are going to earn less than $250,000 a year.

So, yeah, the kid who is an “independent contractor” working his paper route won’t be paying more taxes under Obama’s class warfare plan. That’s great. But the overwhelming majority of small businesses (defined as businesses employing 499 or fewer workers) are going to get the crap beat out of them.

And why are they going to get the crap beat out of them? Because the Hussein got yet another crappy jobs report for the month of June because his economic policy is wildly failing.

So when Obama or fill in the name of your Democrat lying weasel says garbage like “97 percent of small businesses won’t be affected,” realize the bait-and-switch that’s going on and point out that 95% of the small businesses that actually hire workers WILL be affected. The businesses that actually hire workers are going to get clobbered. And the fact that those businesses that actually hire workers only account for a few percent of the total number of small businesses – most of which don’t do any hiring at ALL – is utterly irrelevant IF YOU CARE ABOUT JOBS.

If you are one of the half of all American workers who work for small businesses, realize that most of you are basically voting to lose your damn job if you vote for Obama in November.

This is largely how class warfare always works. All you have to do is demonize “the rich” and get people to hate them and want to attack them and punish them and confiscate and redistribute their stuff. You don’t get to find out until later that those people you just destroyed were the ones who had given you your job. Until after it’s too late.

Barack Hussein Obama wants to hurt the people who create jobs. He wants a society in which people have to go to government (i.e. liberals who are the high priests of government) if they want to be able to work or if they want to get welfare benefits. That’s the bottom line.

(CNSNews.com) – So far, during the presidency of Barack Obama, the price of a gallon of gasoline has jumped 83 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

(AP Photo)

During the same period, the price of ground beef has gone up 24 percent and price of bacon has gone up 22 percent.

When Obama entered the White House in January 2009, the city average price for one gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $1.79, according to the BLS. (The figures are in nominal dollars: not adjusted for inflation.) Five months later in June, unleaded gasoline was $2.26 per gallon, an increase of 26 percent. By December 2011, the price of regular unleaded gas per gallon was $3.28, an 83 percent increase from January 2009.

The price of unleaded gasoline never reached the 10-year high of $4.09 back in July 2008 under George W. Bush’s administration, but it did get close.

By May 2011, gas prices hit a high under the Obama administration at $3.93, about four percentage points away from the July 2008 high.

Ground beef. (AP Photo)

The U.S. city average retail price for one pound of 100 percent ground beef was $2.36 in January 2009. As of December 2011, that price had risen to $2.92—a 23.7 percent increase and a new peak. (Ground beef prices have risen every month since November 2009 – 26 months of price increases.)

Among the first 36 months of Obama’s presidency, the last four (September, October, November, December) showed the average price of one pound of whole wheat bread hovering slightly above two dollars.

Other refrigerated items like ice cream and bacon have increased by substantial amounts.

Ice cream prices, for a half-gallon, were $4.44 in January 2009 and $5.25 in December 2011, an increase of 19.1 percent.

One pound of sliced bacon in January 2009 was $3.73 and in December 2011 had climbed $4.55, an increase of 22 percent. The price hit a high in September 2011 at $4.82 per pound.

Bacon. (AP Photo)

Whole milk prices averaged above three dollars 33 out of the 36 months since Obama took office. In January 2009, the price for one gallon of whole milk was $3.58; but by December 2011, milk prices had slightly declined less than one percent (0.28 percent) to $3.57 per gallon.

The average retail price of Grade A eggs per dozen from January 2009 to December 2011 increased by less than two percent (1.30 percent) from $1.85 to $1.87.

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Karl Marx summed up American liberalism better than anyone else (when he was actually writing about communism):

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”

I have often challenged Democrats to explain how their philosophy had nothing whatsoever to do with this essence-of-communism on this very blog. Never once have I had a response. Rather, I am greeted with the equivalent of the sound of “one hand clapping.”

Journalists and reporters are the worst kind of liars, and fully deserve to “occupy” the lowest level of hell. They posture themselves as “objective” and “neutral” when in fact they are shameless ideological tools of the left. And in fact we can look back over history and see how the media has again and again been used to justify the rise of all of the regimes that were the most vile and murderous in human history.

The San Diego chapter of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement has always been one of its more… colorful outposts. They’re the ones who held a moment of silence in solidarity with the guy who shot at the White House, after all. In the twilight of the Occupy saga, when only the hardcore crazies are left, places like San Diego are giving us a closer look at the “core beliefs” of the movement.

To that end, Occupy San Diego held a little seminar on the virtues of communism on Sunday. The fun begins about six minutes into the clip.

There are a few things to be learned here, besides the astonishing historical ignorance and poor critical thinking skills of the Occupiers. (Remember, a lot of these people are students.) The enduring romantic appeal of a heavily sanitized communism should not be underestimated. Communism and fascism were history’s worst ideas, but they experienced very different fates in the postwar era. Communism evaded the deep grave in which fascism was rightly buried in Western society, and is still credited with marvelous good intentions, not least because it promises to free gullible young people from material concerns… by robbing them blind.

Thus, when the introductory speaker in San Diego repeats the hoary old promises that communism “seeks to eliminate the conditions in which the majority of workers live only to increase capital to fulfill the interests of the ruling class,” and “under communism, society’s wealth would be used in the interests of the workers,” she’s making it sound like advanced Obamanomics.

Those ideas have not been discredited in the public mind, after causing a century of poverty and bloodshed, because Western academics will not allow them to be discredited. Instead of reviewing the grisly wreckage of communist dungeon states and examining why those glittering visions of “everyone sharing everything” lead directly to gulags and enforced starvation, they ask their students to forget about all the unpleasant “mistakes” of totalitarian rulers who didn’t really understand the true communist genius, and restore full faith and credit in the good intentions of an invariably brutal and squalid system.

Later, the featured speaker muses that under socialism and Marxism, “everybody has a say, and all working-class people run society.” Nothing could be further from the truth, and this delusion lies at the core of everything from the 80-proof Marxism sold at university lectures, to the white-lightning bathtub brew guzzled by the Occupiers… and the watered-down and focus-grouped socialism Barack Obama​ sells on a daily basis. These people are simply ignoring the staggering amount of compulsive force necessary to make collectivist systems function. The more “re-distributive” society becomes, the more force it must deploy against its people, and the less of a “say” they have in what occurs.

No amount of political activism, during the increasingly rare and ineffectual trips to the ballot box afforded under collectivist systems, can possibly replace the “say” working-class people exercise through the full ownership of their private property, and the accompanying economic liberty this provides. What a dismal cultural and educational failure it is, to see so many young people who not only fail to understand this, but believe their ignorance makes them morally superior. The Occupy Wall Street tragedy lies in its loss of appreciation for economic liberty, and the failure to appreciate that all other liberties ultimately spring from it, because if you own nothing, you can refuse nothing.

Of course, since their defining act is the forcible appropriation of property they don’t own, and the refusal to contribute to its maintenance and repair, that’s not really a surprise. The approval of compulsion for “righteous” ends is written into this movement’s DNA.

All across the country – in flagrent disregard of government orders – the Occupy movement “occupied” publicly owned areas and demonstrated the fact that they are quintessentially fascist. When they blockaded streets, they were in effect saying, “We are usurping your rights to public streets that you paid for because we the fascisti trump you. You have the right to do what we let you do, and nothing more.”

Keep in mind, while Barack Obama and Democrats self-righteously pretend that only they care about jobs that they ENDORSED and BLESSED this Marxist movement:

OAKLAND — As anti-Wall Street protesters attempt to regroup and settle in for winter after a series of police raids that stripped much of the movement of its signature camps, protesters on the West Coast are staging a comeback.

On Dec. 12, Occupy movements from Seattle to San Diego say they will shut down their local ports, temporarily stopping the flow of capital on the West Coast. Organizers say they aim to disrupt the business of the “1 percent” — in this case, the corporations that own shipping terminals and do business at the ports.

If successful, shutting down the West Coast port system would be a massive show of power for a movement that in some cities seems to have lost some of its momentum along with the camps. It would also mark the first time the loosely organized and very decentralized Occupy movements have coordinated in a major way.

The action comes at a pivotal moment for the two-month-old movement, with protesters facing down a chill both from dropping temperatures and authorities who are increasingly losing patience with tents outside City Hall.

In recent weeks, police have cleared large encampments in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and elsewhere. In Boston, protesters were ordered Thursday to clear out by midnight, although the deadline passed and police did not evict them.

“It’s a really incredible opportunity to build infrastructure for communication between the different movements,” said Jed Johnson, a 26-year-old baker and barista who attended a recent port-shutdown planning meeting in Oakland.

“There’s a little bit of a lull right now,” he added. “Stuff like this is important to keep people out here.”

The move has also galvanized Occupy movements in other cities. Texas occupiers have called for protesters to gather in Houston and march on that city’s port. Even landlocked Denver is trying to get in on the action, with plans to protest at a local Wal-Mart distribution center.

In Oakland, protesters like Johnson are hoping for a repeat of Nov. 2, when tens of thousands converged en masse on the Port of Oakland, successfully stopping the flow of goods overnight.

It could be more complicated this time. The powerful International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which represents most of the port workers whom protesters say they are supporting, has publicly rejected the blockade effort.

“It appears here that outside groups intent on driving their own agendas outside of the ILWU and the Coast Longshore Division are attempting to co-opt the Union,” ILWU leaders wrote in a Nov. 21 memo to union locals.

Some protesters say they believe the rank-and-file port workers are with them and that union leaders are simply being careful to avoid legal problems that could arise if it appeared they were endorsing the shutdown.

Others are taking pains to avoid potential conflicts they worry could strain the warm relationship Occupy has shared with labor groups so far.

In Vancouver, Canada, Occupy member Mya Mayhem said protesters are still talking with local ILWU members and haven’t decided whether their demonstration that day will include attempting to halt port business.

“It is definitely our plan to send as much of a message as we can to union busters and environmental polluters but (we) are striving to maintain a good working relationship with our unions at the same time,” Mayhem wrote in an email.

“As soon as we find out what method will best represent the 99 percent we will go ahead,” Mayhem added.

In Oakland, officials are taking the threat of a second shutdown seriously. Port commissioners recently took out a full-page ad in local papers, reading in part:

“Shutting down the Port of Oakland is a bad idea. Another shutdown will only make things worse — diverting cargo, tax revenue, and jobs to other communities. It will hurt working people and harm our community.”

To bring port traffic to a standstill, protesters need to have enough people blocking terminal entrances so that a local arbitrator declares the situation a health and safety hazard, which will effectively stop port activity until the crowds dissipate or are cleared away.

In Oakland, it remains unclear whether protesters can mobilize those numbers the way they did on Nov. 2, when massive crowds streamed into the port and easily shut it down.

Unlike on Nov. 2, these days there is no camp outside City Hall. A small number of protesters — including at least one “tree-sitter” perched in a Sycamore — have been maintaining a vigil at the quiet plaza. But the space no longer provides the sense of community and visible reminder of the movement’s existence it did when there were 180 tents in it.

Numbers have been dwindling at general assemblies, the meetings where protesters discuss and vote on proposals. At several recent general assemblies, protesters have struggled to keep at least 100 — the number required to bring proposals to a vote — in the outdoor amphitheater that at one point swelled with crowds of more than 1,000.

“There is a sense of loss,” said Lucas, a member of Occupy Oakland’s finance committee who, like many protesters, gave only his first name. “What the camp did was provide a sense of place.”

But Lucas said he has faith that protesters will carry on without their tents. “The fact that the camp is not here does not change that we are living in a time of the most radical increase in inequality in history,” he said.

In economically hard-hit California, the movement does appear to have traction with the public. A recent Field Poll of 1,000 Californians found that 58 percent agree with the underlying reasons for the protest. A little less than half — 46 percent — said they personally identify with the movement.

For now, the toughest challenge may be simply building enough momentum to get through the winter, when protest activities — especially those by campus groups — are generally expected to quiet down.

And for those holdout cities still maintaining camps, the dropping temperatures pose a major obstacle.

Reached by phone earlier this week, Occupy Denver member Jeannie Hartley said she had more immediate concerns than her group’s involvement in the port shutdown day — mainly the roughly 50-75 people, a mix of homeless and activists, she said, who remain outside in record-cold temperatures.

The manager of a downtown farmers market stared toward a barricaded City Hall park Thursday, where vendors until recently sold baskets of plump strawberries and tomatoes, buttery croissants and bunches of fresh-cut roses. The weekly, open-air market was uprooted from the park by the two-month Occupy LA protest, and merchants suffered when relocated across the street from what became a squalid encampment of earnest activists, disenchanted youth, the homeless and drug abusers.

“We were collateral damage,” Hutchinson lamented about the political protest that became “more like a refugee camp.” A quarter of vendors stopped coming and business fell off by as much as 50 percent for those that remained.

Hutchinson’s complaints were among scores heard by City Hall leading up to the decision by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to evict hundreds of protesters from the park in a late-night raid, resulting in nearly 300 arrests last week. The behind-the-scenes pressure added weight to more obvious problems, from illegal drug use to seeping portable toilets to lice.

The left is as filthy and parasitic as the lice that inhabit their bodies.

They crush little people in the name of the little people. And then count on other little people to be too ignorant to understand that fact.

Further down the article, there’s another quote:

Occupy activists are unapologetic and say critics are missing the big picture by focusing on inconveniences instead of the broader problems of society and the camp’s efforts to raise awareness.

You see, under Marxism and under fascism, the ends justify the means. People who demand that we have more and more and more government power and government control have the right to ignore government power and government control in order to push their agenda. They have the right to shut down and destroy your business and the livelihoods of your employees to demand more “jobs.”

Hypocrisy is their quintessential essence.

Here’s the cost of just the Occupy L.A. movement alone as estimated by a liberal Democrat mayor:

Last week the park looked like a faded industrial yard—concrete barriers topped with chain-link fencing walled off what was left of the lawn, once popular with sunbathers and tourists. Villaraigosa has said the cleanup and repair to the park might cost more than $1 million.

And somehow they started out with a beautiful park paid for with Other People’s Money and they turned it into a representation of what is truly in their own ugly souls: a Berlin Wall in microcosm.

This is the true soul of liberalism and the true soul of the Democrat Party. The more power they get, the uglier they become.

These people don’t want jobs and they don’t give one damn about the little guy. All they want is power and control and the ability to decide who wins and who loses. The essence of the right is individual liberty based on the principles of free-markets and limited central government. The essence of the left is totalitarianism.

The Russian people and the German people got what was coming to them, and we’re getting what is coming to us, too. Because we all made the same mistake; we trusted in leftists to take control of our government and thus take control of our economy and our lives. The only question as to how long we will suffer and how bad our suffering will be is merely a question as to how long we are willing to allow the people that I describe above to have power.

And, of course, Democrats who lecture us on “paying our fair share” while they either welch on their debts, refuse to contribute to charity, cheat on their taxes, or all damn three are a dime a dozen. Let’s have a few prominent examples: Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have largely welched on Hillary’s campaign debts. There’s Charlie Rangel, the man who chaired the committee that wrote the tax laws while not bothering to pay his own damn taxes. There’s “Turbo Tax” Timothy Geithner, the man in charge of the Treasury and I.R.S. who didn’t bother to pay his own taxes. There’s former Democrat candidate for president John Kerry, a millionaire, who tried to wriggle away like the worm he is from paying the taxes he should have paid on his yacht. There’s Kerry’s wife and fellow Democrat Teresa Heinz-Kerry, who in spite of inheriting the Heinz fortune actually pays less in taxes than the median American family. And then there’s a bunch of more garden variety cockroach Democrats such as Eric Holder, Tom Daschle, Bill Richardson, and Claire McCaskill. And the vile putrid bunch of Democrats running Bell, California.

These aren’t rich people who want to pay more in taxes; these are liberal elites who want YOU to pay more in taxes because they want to live off a government that keeps growing in size and in power.

Meanwhile, jobs get treated like cancer in the sense that we tax investment the way we tax cigarettes:

A key moment in the dueling Obama-House Republican visit to Silicon Valley Monday was when the wealthy, retired-early Google exec told President Obama to raise his taxes. Yes, you read that right.

“I don’t have a job, but that’s because I’ve been lucky enough to live in Silicon Valley for a while and work for a small startup down the street here that did quite well. So I’m unemployed by choice. My question is would you please raise my taxes?

“I would like very much to have the country to continue to invest in things like Pell Grants and infrastructure and job training programs that made it possible for me to get to where I am. And it kills me to see Congress not supporting the expiration of the tax cuts that have been benefiting so many of us for so long. I think that needs to change, and I hope that you will stay strong in doing that.”

After he was done meeting with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for an hour Monday after the FB event, we chatted with GOP Whip, Rep. Kevin McCarthy for a bit. Kevin is a self-described Bakersfield guy from the other side of tracks (and a family full of Democrats). So why shouldn’t wealthy guys pay more taxes?

“You know that small businesses are the greatest creators of jobs,” McCarthy said. Between 2001-2007, he said, “if you had a company of 500 people or fewer, you added 7 million jobs. If you had 500 or more, you lost a million. The way that small businesses are run, (those kind of tax increases) punishes them.”

And 60 percent of those small businesses, he said, were five years old or younger. But the former entrepreneur said it is a lot harder to start a small business now.

Plus, McCarthy said, “Would you be willing to give a company more money if they didn’t have a budget? We haven’t had a budget passed out of the Senate in two years.”

On Monday at his LinkedIn event, the President contended that “we’ve cut taxes about 16 times since I’ve been in office for small businesses.”

Rep. Paul Ryan told me Monday he wasn’t sure where Obama was getting those numbers. And the White House hasn’t responded to a question about where he pulled those numbers from.

“They’d probably be small nickel-and-dime policies,” Ryan told us. If Obama was talking about “temporary tax rebates, they are a poor substitute for permanently high taxes….” they give small business owners “tremendous uncertainty.”

Ryan’s a small town Wisconsin guy. (Folks very near and dear to our heart.) But he doesn’t think taxing millionaires is the answer, either.

“The reason we tax cigarettes in this country is to get people to stop smoking,” he told us. “If you tax capital more, you get less capital. If you tax job-creators more, you get fewer jobs.”

If the rich guy at the Obama event was referring to taxing his capital gains income, that’s not economically smart to tax, either, Ryan said. “That’s the seed corn for economy, which gets invested in entrepreneurs and start-ups and small businesses.” Raising taxes would cut that supply off at a critical time — when banks aren’t loaning to small businesses as much.

McCarthy said the Silicon Valley visit wasn’t just a way for the top GOPers to suck up to Valley types — and, more important, their wallets. (A job which Obama and fellow Dems have become quiet adept at.) Even though, yes, Cantor had a fundraiser while in town.

“We’re not going on personality, we’re going on policy,” McCarthy said. “For too long, Obama’s Adminstration has been about politics and not policy. So we have no fear about going in and talking about our policy.”

I’m still searching for the poor guy who creates all the jobs. So far I haven’t found him yet. Please let me know if you run into him.

Until then, I’ll continue looking to the men and women Democrats hate and attack for all the job creation. And I’ll figure that job creation will start occurring shortly after Obama and his liberal thugs in Congress are out of power.